Jason Luthor - Floor 21

You know. Back on Floor 8. The Angel.

I shake it out of my head. If there’s something I don’t want to think about right now, it’s that. I’ve got to focus. It’s my neck here, you know, so I really can’t afford to be distracted. Anyway, Prosecutor Davis walks over to the wall by the judge and taps at it. A screen pops to life… but where did it come from? It’s like an image just starts showing on the wall. There’s no television or anything required.

“Your honor,” Davis says, “earlier today, this video was taken from the interior of the junction ventilation shaft leading from Floor 2 onto Floor 1.”

I’m watching this with them, obviously. I think they must have used some sort of robotic camera, but, whatever. This view comes to a stop by a ledge, then extends and leans over the side. It’s staring down the shaft and right onto that fan blade I busted. In my head I’m laughing because I knew that thing would cause me trouble.

The judge turns to me, and he’s a stone-cold statue. Guess I prefer that to angry. “What say you to this?” he asks.

“Pretty much that anyone could have done that.”

“Hm. I agree.” He turns to the lawyer. “Prosecutor Davis, do you have anything more concrete that could identify this young woman as the person responsible for breaking the fan blade?”

“Of course, Your Honor,” he says as he taps at the wall again. Now there’s a camera looking down the hall on Floor 4. I recognize what we’re looking at, and it’s not great. “As you can see, less than a minute into this video, the young woman enters this Cleanup closet on hallway 4-5. This is in the early morning.” He taps the corner of the screen, and the video starts running. There’s also a timer in the upper right. As the seconds tick by, yeah, you see me heading down the hall. Because I did. My smirk is obvious because it’s funny seeing myself knocking at the door of the closet. I wait for an answer, but I’m also looking all around to see if Security’s coming. When nobody does, I disappear inside. “The accused proceeded to enter the closet shortly before Reception. She would not leave that closet until close to evening.” The video seems to fly by, and when it resumes, it’s of me coming out. I look like a hot mess, just doused in sweat. The video pauses as I get close to the camera, and you can see my clothes are pretty much sticking like hot glue to me. “As the court can see, she entered the closet and was gone for several hours. During that time the destruction of the fan near Floor 1 occurred. Before the accused was taken into custody, Security investigated the closet in question, only to find that a ventilation access had been tampered with.”

The judge nods to all this, like he approves. I’m still confused because I can’t figure out if he’s on my side or not. “Damning evidence indeed, Prosecutor Davis. Accused, do you have any response to this?”

I shake my head. “So, I’m not really sure what response you want me to give. I mean, you’ve got video of me going into a closet. Great. But, uh, where’s the proof I broke the fan? I mean, maybe I’m not the only one running through those vents. Ever thought of that? Maybe there’s, like, a whole society of vent crawlers going up and down the Tower. Think it might be a good idea to look into that first? Because all I’m saying is that even if I did go in the vents, that doesn’t mean anything. You can’t actually prove that it was me, and maybe you should check some of the other floors to see who else was breaking in through the Cleanup closets.” As I’m saying all this, I patently recognize that my argument isn’t what you would call revolutionary, but hey, I’m just trying to buy myself some time here.

Still, at least the judge kinda seems to agree. He nods and turns to the prosecutor. “Can we know for sure that there aren’t others also prowling through the vents?”

“No, Your Honor,” he says.

“So, she may or may not have been the person that made their way onto Floor 1?”

“With all due respect, she is our most likely suspect.”

“Still, likeliness doesn’t necessarily mean guilt, does it?”

At this point I’m thinking, hey, maybe I was wrong. This dude’s not so bad. He’s no monster. He’s actually kinda, you know, defending me.

Prosecutor Davis turns away for a second as he says, “The evidence, at this point, leans heavily against her. We have yet to find any other ventilation grates that were removed in this fashion.”

“Prosecutor, what’s the current population of the Tower?”

Now the judge has this guy squirming, and Davis pulls at his collar a little. “Well, Your Honor, I don’t know off the top of my head. I believe the last estimate was that we have roughly 15,000 people living on the upper and lower levels combined, and only because so much of the Tower has been converted to living space.”

“I see. So, despite the sheer size of the Tower and the number of people living here, we know for a fact that the accused was the only person that was active in the vents on the day in question?”

Now Davis backs off as his face lights up like a cherry. “No, Your Honor. As I said, though, she is the most likely suspect.”

“You may say so. I will be the final judge of that.” He grunts, turning in his chair slightly. “Do you have anything else to present?”

“Of course, Your Honor.” Davis taps on the wall again. “I’d like to present to the court some recordings of the defendant. These are the accused’s own words, in her own voice.”

My curiosity doesn’t exist for more than a split second before my teeth clench together like an impenetrable wall. It’s painful to hear as my voice begins to pour out of the speakers. “But I see someone there, dressed in all white. They’ve got their back to me, and it looks like they’re messing with something in the wall … Whatever she’s wearing is skintight, but the worst part is when she suddenly looks up from whatever she’s doing. She’s noticed me. Then she turns.”

Davis steps away from the judge and over to me. “Would you like me to play for the court your other words?”

This guy. My teeth dig into my lip for a second before I say to him, “Go ahead, jerk.”

He just gives me that smug look of his. “If the court would allow me to play some of your other words from this recording?”

Judge Reaver nods pretty quickly to the offer. He wants to hear this, even if I don’t want to. “Please proceed. It’s in the best interest of this case, after all.”

Davis’ finger taps at the screen and I cringe as I hear my voice playing again. I remember pretty clearly saying the words that start coming out of the speakers: “ I can’t deal with Angels. I can’t. I can’t .”

That’s all that plays but the prosecutor smiles like a dumb dog as he talks. “Well, it seems that you are, clearly, guilty of talking about Angels. I believe the entire court can determine that on the basis of your own recording. Or are you going to argue that it’s someone else’s voice we are listening to?”

I’m not sure what bothers me more, that he played my recording back, or that he had my recording in the first place. How were they spying on me? “Okay now, look,” I say. “Sure, I said those things. But I wasn’t talking to anyone. I was recording myself. Those were just my own thoughts. When I was recording it, I thought that I’d go crazy if I didn’t, you know, try and say what I was thinking. I know what happens to people when they talk about Angels. I only recorded what happened because if I didn’t, I was going to end up telling someone. If you’d just seriously stop and think about it, you’d see I was trying to follow the Tower rules.”